On The Other Side
by paperdoll yomi
Summary: Possible postmovie eventuality I thought I’d write about. What would happen if Chas and Gabriel met after the night at Ravenscar, with him now a half breed, and her demoted to a human? One shot. Delightfully plotless. Revs appreciated.


**On The Other Side**

**Uh…would you call it Chasriel? More importantly, would you credit it? Or even review it?**

**This could be seen as an epilogue to my other ongoing fiction, Archangel's Apprentice, when it is finished…but I purposefully didn't mention Zaphanael so this could stand on its own. I think its better that way.**

**I hope you like, I don't think many writers have actually covered this situation yet so…at least it will be original. Rated for language.**

**To my gorgeous sister Yomi, thanks for encouraging me with this. And Risse; please enjoy because you've been waiting ages!**

Gabriel made her way to the cemetery under the cover of darkness. Well, the streetlights shone and the cars rushed past, but Gabriel did not notice them. All she saw was complete, total darkness for herself and her situation. And her…her future? Gabriel had never thought of the future before. Always dwelt in the here, the now, the current. She had lived for many millennia, preoccupied in the moment, because the past, present and future was all blended into one, custom built for her half breed existence.

Her first month on the other side of things had been disorientating to say the least. Her gravitas was gone. Human life was consuming, poignant, and so…fast. She was not yet used to the pace of her new reality. Yet her life was so free now. She felt liberated in a sense. But in another way it was painful, to loose everything in one moment, one fateful turning point. Gabriel had had plenty of time to think on it, and despite her metaphorical forecast of 'darkness', had come to the conclusion that this life must have a purpose, one she was determined to turn to her advantage.

But she could not think for the life of her why she was going to the graveyard. For the life of her. That was a good one. _She had no life in her_, not now. She knew why in broader terms. She wanted to see the boy with her own eyes, the one it was said had been turned into an angel. The one she had killed.

That night at Ravenscar still seared a painful scar on Gabriel's now pitifully slow human memory. More than a month ago now, but she would never forget. She had failed, and as a result she was forsaken, cast out of heaven. A fallen angel.

Gabriel had spent years as a lowly soldier angel before being elevated to God's divine presence. She had preformed well in some test, become His favourite. The feeling had been good, for a time. For several millennia, in fact. She had loved her Father, worshipped Him with all her heart, and mind, and soul. She had done His bidding without a second thought. But eventually Gabriel, without knowing why, and without being fully aware of it, had wanted more. Greed. A human instinct.

_These humans are our downfall, _she perceived_. We should give them more credit. We are sinless and pure, we are higher beings who see them as despicable._ _Yet we look down upon their daily acts of violence and sin and cruelty;_ murder, rape, theft_; and we find ourselves jealous. _

It took a lot of strength for Gabriel to remind herself that she no longer fell into the superior category in her train of thought. She was as human as they came, excepting the odd divine defect, the celestial spark that still in burnt in her brain, guttering and flaring. There was no longer any 'we'.

Yet Gabriel was not a renegade. She had been doing God's work, she was sure of it. She had been acting on her best intentions, in accordance with His will. But the Lord moved in mysterious ways. Gabriel's angular features twisted into a smile. A cliché. But it still applied to her situation.

Gabriel still loved God with a blind devotion, even admiring Him for demoting her as He had done. She should have had the foresight to realize she was not indispensable, not entirely invincible. No one was, excepting God Himself, and Gabriel had allowed herself to be sidetracked from His path with illusions of her own advancement. _When did I…become like that? _It didn't matter. It was a mistake she would never make again. She would have to work hard in order to be granted a welcome return into her father's flock. She wanted desperately to be revered once more as the highest of all the archangels in His ranks. To be granted salvation from the highest authority possible.

Gabriel's thought process of how she would achieve this was straightforward. _What was the price of salvation? Simple. Repentance. And what is the road to repentance? Realization and righteousness._

Gabriel had realized her overall crime; the act of conspiring against God and heaven. All-encompassing and impenetrable to say the least. There was a more specific sin she had committed that night, and that was murder, more punishable by the human definition of crime at least. She had killed the kid. Constantine's apprentice. She had dragged him away from the human female and smashed him from ceiling to floor like a rag doll. Enjoyable. At the time.

Now came step two: time to be righteous. Human existence was enlightening, in a way. She knew that as a human, she had to actively repent of her sin. And the opportunity had presented itself before her in the form of the newly-halfbreed boy.

Gabriel unlatched the gate to the cemetery still thinking about him. When she had crawled out of the pool in the hydrotherapy room, and stumbled over his broken body, her first instinct as a human to kneel down and breathe the life back into him. But it was no longer possible for her to perform miracles. The power had been stripped away from her in one incinerating wrench of the Almighty's hand. His grace had been torn from her as her wings had burnt from her back, disintegrating into so much ash and charred feathers.

The pathetic stumps on her shoulders were still sore, as was her bruised ego which hurt more than anything. Gabriel would never admit she was being hypocritical when she had chastised John for his, but then she would never admit to being shallow enough to care about the mutilated appearance of her back. She was still adjusting to the human dimension; she did not have to embrace her new-found emotions just yet.

She walked in between the silent graves, kicking aside empty drink cans, old newspapers, litter wrappers and God knows what other trash. Her mouth twisted. Humans really didn't know what a good thing they had until they lost it, and they carried on spoiling it right up until that point. Nevertheless, despite the dilapidated nature of the cemetery, its nighttime peacefulness and tranquility was not lost on Gabriel. She took a moment to fully appreciate it. Silence was beautiful, and unfortunately a rare thing in her new surroundings.

The moonlight was harsh, falling across the stone mounds in linear shafts, but the light receded as she approached her destination. His grave was not here. It was new; it would be in the most recent corner of the cemetery, a pretty expanse of grass with new roses rising from their premature buds. Gabriel knew instinctively where she was going even without a central insight. She could smell the flowers and the freshly dug earth.

Her nose led her to the right place. She smiled a little, congratulating herself on finding the gravestone so soon as she read the graphic engraving on it. Chas Kramer. 1986-2005. Turning away, Gabriel made a calculation on her fingers. Eighteen years. Eighteen and dead. Her work. Why had she killed him again?

_Yeah, good work, you hear that? Coz this is Kramer, Chas Kramer asshole…_

That was it. _He was so arrogant_, Gabriel justified. _So oblivious of how fragile he was. I wanted to show him…It was not my intention to kill him. I miscalculated…I forgot just how easily humans break._

"Well, that's good to know."

A voice. Not hers. Gabriel wheeled around to face the gravestone again. She righted herself as she saw him. The half breed. All translucent skin, angelic curls and huge eyes. Beautiful. Even more than he had been previously. Taken by God and moulded into an even more delectable shape.

The awe-inspiring span of his wings hung over his back. She supposed she could see them because she knew, with absolute certainty, that they were there. God had not been so merciless as to take away her entire knowledge of Heaven, and Hell, those who rise and those who fall, and the characteristics of each race.

Even though she saw the wings, he seemed to her more like a ghost than an angel. The human concept of vengeful spirits and hauntings rose into her mind.

Physically, he'd hardly changed, apart from the new ethereal glow around his skin, the gold discs in place of his pupils and, of course, the wings. He was wearing clothes similar to those she'd seen him in on the night he died. Not ripped and bloodstained this time, of course, but she did wonder if he had turned up like this deliberately to wrong foot her. He'd known she was coming, she was sure of it.

What did it matter? Despite everything, the most marked change was in his eyes. Before they had been bright and eager and blank with adorable childish innocence. Now they looked infinitely more piercing, and in a reverse effect, she could also see through them, deep into the new knowledge inside. She hated the way he looked at her now, although she knew his expression was not exactly angelic right now. Scorn and hatred twisted his face.

"Good to know you didn't_ intend_ to kill me."

Gabriel had anticipated hostility, ferocity, perhaps even violence. So she stood her ground. "You'll want to let go of your bitterness eventually, Chas. It's a depreciating quality in a half breed."

He smirked, and ignored her. "Did it hurt when you fell?"

Gabriel riled. This fell in with what she had expected as well. An instant attack on her Fall from Grace. After all, she had killed him. He would not discard the opportunity to mock her, now their positions had been switched. Even in this pitiful human state, the irony invoked in the reversal of their roles was not beyond Gabriel. Now she was the low, weak, frail human, a sinner to boot, and he was the superior being. Chas _knew_ now.

"I consider answering that question beneath my dignity," she replied.

He snorted, the contempt in his eyes easily definable. "You don't have any fuckin dignity left to lose. _Did it hurt when you fell?_"

Abominable creature! She felt like screaming in his face. He had been favoured, he had given angelic grace, yet he still acted and talked like the foul-mouthed, arrogant kid she had killed. True, her status was diminished, but she would not act subservient to him.

She came closer to the gravestone on which he sat.

"Did it hurt when you died?" She countered her voice mild but her tone wickedly acerbic. "I could feel your confusion, you know. I could hear what you thought. You were so confused. You didn't know why it was that you were dying."

She changed the pitch of her voice in imitation. "Fuck, it hurts, everything hurts. Shit, what happened? Shit, what is this, blood? I'm fucking bleeding, what just happened, why do I feel like I'm dying? Help me, I don't want to die, God, someone help me, I'm scared, I don't want to die…"

"_Fuck you_."

And he was on her, lunging down from the stone even faster than she anticipated. His hands were around her throat, ready to snap her neck before she could blink.

But Gabriel still retained a fraction of that supernatural speed herself. Her reflexes knew he wouldn't ignore a taunt like that, even if she didn't. Her arm instantly rose to press the gun into his forehead.

For a second, they were both shocked. She did not quite breathe as his fingers choked her, but they held their position, not tightening.

The anger in his huge eyes turned to amusement, and he smirked. "What are you doing, Gabriel? Are you trying to fucking insult me again?"

"Maybe." She whispered.

She didn't really know what she was doing with the gun. She'd bought it from a man who had looked up as she blocked the sun from in front of him. A hood and a loudmouth who sat in the darkness of an alleyway, a syringe in his arm and the firearm on his lap.

"Give me your gun." She had grated, and he had given it to her.

She had known it would offer her no protection against a half breed; of course she had known. But Gabriel had required the subconscious knowledge of security, of protection, of the back up plan, which the feeling of the useless gun in her back pocket provided. For a second she had hesitated before bringing it to the graveyard. She had thought, _No, this is too human, too soon. _But she had succumbed to her fear.

She tightened her finger on the trigger. Chas did not even bother flinching. Why would he? He knew she wouldn't shoot; she needed him. He knew that if she shot, she could never hit him; he was too fast. He knew that if she tried; he would snap her neck like she would a branch. He knew that in the impossible eventuality that he was hit he wouldn't be affected at all; he couldn't feel pain. But most importantly, he knew she couldn't shoot at all; there were no bullets in the gun.

Gabriel squeezed. The safety clicked. She dropped the handgun. It fell with a dull, hardly audible sound on the grass.

"I'm sorry. I have started off wrong. I came to…"

"Repent? Yeah, gotcha. You don't have to speak for me to hear, human."

Good that he kept interrupting her. She was running out of air. She rasped out a request.

"Would you let go of my throat…please?"

He had already, before the words were out of her mouth. He backed away to the granite structure of the stone and knelt before it, tracing his fingers over the engraved lettering of his own name.

Gabriel smiled wanly. A childish action. And the conversation? Yeah, let's try that again.

"I heard about you in the community. Midnite's. Everyone's talking about you, Chas. They say you're my replacement. Is it true?"

She could not see the expression on his face, only the slight flex of his wings as the night air sifted through his feathers. "It could be."

"But it's not, is it? Because I don't plan on staying human for long. I'm on my way up already, as it were. I will be welcomed back into the ranks."

"Good luck with that."

She heard his derision. "You don't believe me."

"No shit. You expect to be allowed back after what you did? You're crazy."

"So I've been told."

_Gabriel. You're insane._

She took a step towards him, and another, and another, until she was standing above him. She almost reached out for him, but hesitated before her fingers came into contact with his skin.

"Can I touch you?"

He pulled back a little. "What?"

At that reaction, Gabriel knew, that in a distant corner of Chas's brain, he was still afraid of her. She sighed. Still vulnerable, this kid, no matter how else he had been changed.

"You heard me, 'half breed'. I want to touch you. I want to feel what I'm missing."

He stared at her, as though trying to understand. "Why should I let you?"

"You shouldn't. But I…"

"You want me, is that it?"

Gabriel's forthcoming giggle rang with deeper laugher as she shook her golden curls. "Is that what you think? You have not yet risen that much in status. You're still just a boy, Chas."

_But yes, for what it means, I do want you. You are beautiful, perfection personified. But it is not for that reason that I want you._

There was a pause between them, and in the end, it was the half breed that broke the silence, just as Gabriel was about to draw away.

"Go ahead, then."

Gabriel thought about asking about whether he was sure, but she did not want to wait for further confirmation. _I am human_, she thought. _I may as well give into human informality._

She spread her fingers out and skipped them along the edges of his wings. The feathers felt beautifully light, and somehow warm, insulating. This was what she had missed, so much, so fervently since her fall. The ability of flight. She remembered how it had been, how the earth had looked from the air, while she caressed Chas's wings. She was so involved in her reverie that she forgot to avoid the more jagged feathers at the edges, and did not at first notice a sharp pain in her hand. When it dawned on her that something hurt, she frowned and had to blink a couple of times to focus properly.

"Ouch." She said absently, and drew back, looking at her fingers in the moonlight.

Physical pain. Constantine had mentioned this. Blood welled up from a slit in her index. She had cut it on the pointed edge of a feather. He stood and turned to face her as she looked up, a single tear running down her cheek.

Her gaze transferred to him, standing before her. Gabriel came to the profound realization that there was another reason for Chas's usefulness; if she couldn't rejoin the celestial ranks of the archangels, she wanted to once again feel that glory, be as close as she could be to the thrill of the power she had formerly indulged herself in. She wanted to touch it in Chas. She wanted to gorge herself on it- on him.

The idea should be sick, detestable to her. She was misguided. Her mind had been twisted and malformed, possibly damaged by its condension into human capacities. It was objectionable, but she couldn't resist the temptation.

"Father, forgive me." She inhaled.

Gabriel's devilish smile came back into play the second before she locked her mouth onto Chas's. She kissed him savagely, delving deep, wanting to get as close as possible to what she had lost. She dug her nails into the half breed's soft skin and hair and wings, latching herself onto the purity, feasting on the innocence she could taste.

And for a second something was happening, her vision was clearing, her senses were sharpening, her thoughts were clarifying and it felt good, it felt so good. She was returning to her former self, this was working, it was beautiful, she would be reinstated in all her glory…

_Nothing is as easy as all that, Gabriel._

Someone spoke. They spoke of a thousand bells ringing, a hundred wolves howling, a chorus of tortured angels screaming.

She pulled away, forcing down a cry of shock and pain at the horror of that voice she had just heard, the voice in her head. The voice was so full of authority, so level, so loud and all-consuming that it was unbearable for as low a being as her to hear.

_Who was that? Whose voice is that that I once listened to in adoration, and now I cannot cope with the sound of it in my head without wanting to die?_ Gabriel knew the answer, and she knew that the speaker was not impressed with her efforts to ingratiate herself with Him.

The abominable tang of impurity rose to her nostrils, and a sharp black pain shuddered through her, seeping over her soul, staining it with guilt and shame and vile human sin.

Then all she saw was Chas, staring at her with an unreadable expression, his lips glistening from her saliva. The golden glow in the centre of his dark irises intensified as he regarded her. At first she thought he would say nothing. But then his mouth moved.

"Well, whaddya know? What did you expect?" He asked sarcastically. And then, leaning forwards, with eagerness taking the place of the blankness in his eyes, "What did you _feel_?"

And Gabriel replied, "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

She walked from the graveyard with her heavy footsteps echoing soundlessly on the ground with such weight that they were heard in Hell.

**Thanks for reading. What did you think? I'd really appreciate some reviews.**


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